IRIX® 6.5.17 Update Guide 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy. Mountain View, CA 94043-1351 Telephone (650) 960-1980 FAX (650) 961-0595 August 2002 Dear Valued Customer, SGI® is pleased to present the new IRIX® 6.5.17 maintenance and feature release. Starting with IRIX® 6.5, SGI created a new software upgrade strategy, which delivers both the maintenance (6.5.17m) and feature (6.5.17f) streams. This upgrade is part of a family of releases that periodically enhances IRIX 6.5. There are several benefits to this release strategy: it provides periodic fixes to IRIX, it assists in managing upgrades, and it supports all platforms. Additional information on this strategy and how it affects you is included in the updated Installation Instructions manual contained in this package. If you need assistance, please visit the Supportfolio™ online website at http://support.sgi.com or contact your local support provider. In conjunction with the release of IRIX® 6.5.15, SGI added to the existing life cycle management categories the Limited Support Mode that customizes services we deliver to our users. This new support mode is targeted for open source products. We now offer eight modes of service 2 for software supported by SGI: Active, Maintenance, Limited, Legacy, Courtesy, Divested, Retired, and Expired. Active Mode is our highest level of service. It applies to products that are being actively developed and maintained and are orderable through general distribution. Software fixes for all levels of problems can be expected. Maintenance Mode software is maintained and is still an important part of our product mix. No new functionality is added to products in this support mode. Functional fixes for severe problems are generally available. Products in this support mode category are still orderable through general distribution. Software usually stays in this category about 18 months before being moved to a mode of lesser support. Limited Mode is a restricted level of service developed mainly for products developed and maintained by open source organizations and that are distributed by SGI. Legacy Mode software generally runs on out-of-production operating system versions or system platforms that are no longer in active development or maintained. These products are usually distributed with limited availability. New support contracts may be offered and renewed. Services provided with Legacy Mode are limited to providing existing fixes and “workarounds” for reported problems. IRIX® 6.2, IRIX® 6.3, and IRIX® 6.4 operating system revisions are examples of major operating system releases that are supported in this category. 3 Courtesy Mode software is not officially part of the software support offerings. Courtesy mode software is not covered by software support contracts, and call center support is not available. An e-mail alias may be provided to facilitate customer communications and to address any technical questions. Response times will vary according to availability of resources. The e-mail alias may be terminated at any time without advance notice. IRIS Showcase™ and Cosmo Worlds™ are examples of products with Courtesy Mode support. Divested Mode software has been turned over to a third party who assumes all responsibility for support. SGI no longer distributes these products. Calls received at the SGI Call Center for support on divested products will be redirected to the applicable third party. CA Unicenter® TNG and Syntax TAS™ are examples of divested products. Retired Mode provides restricted support for older software products which are no longer generally distributed by SGI. This level of support has severe limitations on portability to new platforms. Availability of support at this level is limited to existing customers with whom we have existing contractual obligations. This is the final stage before a product is completely removed from the SGI product set. Expired Mode software products have reached the end of their useful life. These products are not supported or distributed in any form by SGI. Examples are: IRIX® 5.3, IRIXPro™, and Proconf. 4 The webpage at http://support.sgi.com/irix/news/index.html#swmodes contains a link to a webpage where the eight software support modes are described in more detail. This webpage also contains links to the latest customer letters, which provide a list of the various software products that have changed support modes. We thank you for your continued commitment to SGI. Terry Oberdank Vice President, Global Services SGI 5 Welcome to your SGI IRIX 6.5.17 update. This booklet contains: • A list of key features in IRIX 6.5.17 • A list of CDs contained in the IRIX 6.5.17 update kit • A guide to SGI websites 6 IRIX 6.5.17 Key New Features The following changes have been incorporated into the core IRIX 6.5.17 overlay CDs and the Applications CD. New Hardware Platforms or Features Fibre Channel Adapters • Updated firmware for QLogic 2 Gbit fibre channel adapters The firmware for the QLogic 2 Gbit fibre channel adapters, the 2300, 2310 and 2342, is being updated to version 3.01.07. With this firmware, the amber LED on the boards will flash when there is no cabled connected or there is no signal on a connected cable. New Software Features - Feature Stream Only Filesystems • XVM Manager Graphical User Interface (GUI) The IRIX 6.5.17f release includes the XVM Manager GUI. The XVM Manager GUI provides access to the tasks that help you set up and administer XVM logical volumes and provides icons representing states and structure of the XVM volume elements. With the XVM Manager GUI, you can perform the following tasks: – Administer XVM logical volumes by means of a web browser, such as Netscape or Internet Explorer. 7 – Drag and drop XVM volume elements to create local and cluster volume topologies. – Drag and drop disks to label them or give them away. – See volume element and filesystem status changes instantly, reflected in color-coded icons. – Click buttons to create volume elements quickly. For information on the XVM Manager GUI, see the XVM Volume Manager Administrator’s Guide, 007-4003-011. • XVM snapshot feature The XVM snapshot feature provides the ability to create virtual point-in-time images of a filesystem without causing a service interruption. The snapshot feature requires a minimal amount of storage because it uses a copy-on-write mechanism that copies only the data areas that change after the snapshot is created. For information on the XVM snapshot feature, see the XVM Volume Manager Administrator’s Guide, 007-4003-011. Use of the XVM snapshot features requires a FLEXlm license. • Support for XVM volumes with FailSafe 2.1.3 IRIX 6.5.17 includes support for the use of local XVM volumes as FailSafe resources. This requires FailSafe version 2.1.3. XVM volumes used in conjunction with CXFS should not be added as FailSafe resources. For information on configuring FailSafe resources, see the IRIS FailSafe Version 2 Administrator’s Guide, 007-3901-006. 8 • CXFS upgrade: filesystem definitions The structure of the CXFS filesystem configuration was changed with the release of IRIX 6.5.13f. Backward compatibility with earlier versions is no longer maintained as of IRIX 6.5.14f, since all nodes in the cluster must be running the same or adjacent releases. – If you are upgrading from IRIX 6.5.13f to 6.5.14f or later, there is no further impact. – If you are upgrading from IRIX 6.5.12f or earlier, you must perform a one-time manual conversion of your CXFS filesystem definitions. See the CXFS Version 2 Software Installation and Administration Guide, 007-4016-014, for more information • CXFS upgrade: cluster nodes For CXFS customers, if you install IRIX 6.5.17f including sysadm_base on a cluster node where the 6.5.13f or earlier version of CXFS is installed, you will need to upgrade to the 6.5.17f version CXFS (sysadm_cxfs) and install 6.5.17f sysadm_cluster. New Software Enhancements - Maintenance and Feature Stream Online Documentation • Online Documentation Tools/Books Upgrade With IRIX 6.5.17, the underlying documentation tools and books have undergone a major upgrade. These processes now allow for 9 SGML or XML documents to be published directly into HTML (our delivery format). These same tools are available to you as part of the “SGI Book Building Tools” product; formerly the “IRIS InSight Professional Publisher”. For viewing documentation on the IRIX Interactive Desktop, the following changes have been made: InfoSearch (the primary online documentation viewer) has been revamped to support the new document format, SGIHelp (the IRIX Desktop Help system) has undergone minor changes, and the Dynaweb product is no longer shipped (or required). In addition, the IRIS InSight Viewer (insight) now exists solely as an intermediate process that launches your standard desktop web browser to access InfoSearch. Online books can also be viewed using your standard desktop web browser by opening the (local) file: /usr/share/Insight/library/SGI_bookshelves/index.h tml Our goal is to deliver all online books to you in this new format. There are circumstances whereby some books may still exist on your local system in the “old format.” Examples would include some of the SGI Developer documentation: the MIPSpro compiler books and the ProDev WorkShop books fall into this category (books that require conversion). The online documentation tools will report a warning when encountering books in the “old format” that require conversion. 10 A conversion process is provided (the existing insightAdmin command). Various options for performing the conversion are available through this tool. It is important to note that the conversion only needs to be done once, unless additional products are installed that still contain books in the “old format”.